Community Health and Wellbeing during the Coronavirus Pandemic

By Dimitrije Martinovic

(Dimitrije is a staff with FOCUS MEDIA ARTS CENTRE)

Radio Regent reporter David Wall speaks to Dr. Wendel Block, a family physician with the East End Community Health Centre and long-time advocate for marginalized communities, focussed on human rights and the social determinants of physical and mental health.

Dr. Wendel Block is a family physician with over 30 years experience in Toronto community health centers. Dr. Block has centered his work on helping people who often face barriers in in getting health care and who have problems with their health.

A lot of Dr. Block’s clients are refugees or have moved to Canada because of political and economic upheaval. Providing the appropriate health care solutions for someone who may have had traumatic experiences as a refugee, or has had a scarcity of food, must take into account more than just prescribing medicinal solutions, it must also acknowledge that these experiences fall into the category of the social determinants? For those who have experienced trauma and dislocation, says Dr. Block, “the solution lies in a broader range of options, such as finding opportunities to reconnect and to re-establish the sense of their own personal grounded-ness and their own story and their own connections and finding ways to make sure people have secure housing, employment opportunities, educational opportunities, access to learn, you know, the language of social exchange.”

Another area of Dr. Block’s activities involves working with migrant workers who face many challenges while working in Canada, but especially during the pandemic, accessing the Canadian Health system as an uninsured person has been that much more difficult. A little know fact, in terms of health care, during the pandemic, hospitals have been mandated to treat people, regardless of their status, regardless of whether they have OHIP or not. Unfortunately, a year ago only 30 – 35% of clinics were aware that they could see uninsured people.

The concern for Dr. Block and others who work in this field is that when the pandemic is over, governments will be inclined to cut these programs in the name of fiscal responsibility – curtailing once again health care for non-status individuals. Dr. Block argues that researchers,  public health workers , and advocates all point to the notion that it is in everybody's interest to have everybody have access to health care, to be healthy, and to be safe.